Chapter 354 Volume V – Chapter 72: Like a Lifeless Doll

Everything happened too fast. My senses were disoriented because of the momentary, strange exhaustion that came over me after I had used almost everything I had, but I could see, I could run… yet, even then, I couldn’t do anything.

I watched the creature approach Lucia and Sue with its left paw spread wide. I wished for a moment of speed, to appear in front of the creature… to be faster than it.

But the creature reached the duo before me. And the one it had its eye on… was Sue.

Lucia had realized what was happening. Her eyes were looking somewhere between the creature and Sue, her blood-red eyes glowing with mana as she swung the sword in her left hand toward it.

But she was slow. The creature in front of him, though wounded, was probably a B grade. How could she react to it? The fact that she had noticed its purpose, that she had acted, was good… but it was not enough.

And the creature, just like that, unstopped by anything… swung its claw at Sue. But it wasn’t a normal swing, in fact… it was an attack from a distance as if it had some other purpose, even though it was powerful enough to easily rip her in two.

I saw the three red lines on Sue’s chest, her eyes still in the cloud of dust that had not yet completely dissipated. She couldn’t even understand what was happening, couldn’t comprehend it. But that was not the only thing that happened.

The creature’s claw just missed Sue. Or rather, grazed her… and not only that. As if following the creature’s attack, all the air currents in the cave suddenly shifted, heading toward the creature’s position with great force. It was so strong that it knocked Lucia off balance and almost threw her backward.

But it was not over. The creature swung its claw again, backward as it was. This time, without actually touching anyone, missing… But that was its aim in the first place.

All the airflow that had been concentrated on the creature’s attack suddenly dissipated, instantly reversed, even more forcefully than before. An explosion filled my ears, even though there was no such thing, and everything became a blur.

The pressure of the attack pushed my body back, and if it hadn’t been for the wall behind me, I might have been thrown back several meters… But I crashed into the wall and my body sank into the rocks, shaking the whole cave.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lucia’s feet knocked off and sent flying into a wall, while Sue… the one most affected by the air currents… was suddenly thrown into the air as if she were… a lifeless doll.

As soon as my body made contact with the wall and stopped, I tried to pull myself together, but my muscles refused to listen. My legs trembled as I tried to stand up, as if they were trying to keep me where I was… But I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t do it…

I stretched my legs, prepared to dive into the huge pit in the center of this big cave. And as soon as I did, a sharp wave of pain spread through my whole body, and all my muscles stiffened at once. Before I could even take my first step, I fell flat on my face.

I barely lifted my head, I was going to try to leap forward again… But then I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I suddenly froze in place.

No… It can’t be, right?

I saw Sue’s body, barely able to stop as she crashed through the hole in the ceiling that resembled a window to the sky. Her eyes were closed, blood seeping from the wound in her chest, adding a new color to her clothes, which were almost completely changed from dust and dirt a long time ago.

“N- no, no…”

But… it didn’t stop with that, I could only watch, unable to do anything, as what I had done everything I could to move my body to prevent from the very beginning happened.

“Stop…”

Her body just separated from the wall. Lacking any strength, she unconsciously bent forward… Then, she started to fall.

“NO!”

I forgot all my pain, all sensations in my body stopped for a moment. A faint blue glow covered my body as I did everything I could to stand up. Then, I threw myself into the air, ignoring everything.

I saw Sue’s closed eyes seem to open for a moment, and as I moved closer to her with every millisecond, I reached out my hands towards her… to catch her, to save her. A single thought ran through my mind.

I can make it!

But it didn’t stay in my mind for a second as it was, it quickly turned into something else.

I will make it!

There were two meters or less between us, she seemed to be between my fingers… I could see her dark blue irises between her eyelids, which I couldn’t tell whether they were open or closed.

Then… she just fell.

All the sounds stopped, everything stopped moving in an instant.

But Sue’s body kept falling.

Just like that, with not even two meters between us… she fell into the depths of a huge pit with no bottom in front of my eyes, even though she seemed to be right at my fingertips.

And I… couldn’t do anything.

*******

My back hit something hard, but it was not a normal impact. I was thrown backward by a tremendous force, such a force that I found myself in the air as soon as my feet left the ground.

But I didn’t take any heavy damage, in fact, almost no damage at all… Initial Damage Protection, the C grade skill I had, was all about that, after all… Neutralizing the first major damage I would take in an hour’s cooldown, whether it was physical or not, as best it could.

And that’s what it did. I didn’t feel any sharp pain in any part of my body, no muscles were strained… the skill had worked flawlessly. However, it still took me a while to recover from the shock, to move. The air currents from the creature’s attack were so strong that the cave was a mess. The effects were just beginning to wear off.

That’s when I heard something, a single word echoing quite loudly… a strong, yet feeble voice of someone familiar.

“NO!”

No…?

That… sounds like Adrian’s voice. What’s going on?

He was kneeling, his left side facing me. He was at the edge of the bottomless pit in the center of the room, his right hand extended forward, but he was just waiting. His eyes and body were trembling all the time. It was as if he was frozen, as if… all connection between him and the world had been severed.

I squinted, unable to understand what was happening. I looked for the creature. I quickly looked back to where we had just stood, and what I saw was… simply emptiness.

There are blood trails leading back to where we came from, presumably from the creature… but nothing else.

Did it escape? I guess… it did… It would have attacked someone by now, right?

So, I continued to cast my eyes around as I slowly made my way toward Adrian. This time I was looking for someone else, someone I thought I would find quite easily.

But Sue was nowhere to be found. There was no sign of her hitting anything. It was like… she just disappeared.

Where is she?

Though, wait…

My steps slowed down, then stopped completely. My eyes were darting from here to there, but now… I just focused on a single point.

Adrian’s shout, that pit, his posture…

Ah, it… can’t be…

I felt my body tremble as my lips curled slightly upward. I continued my steps weakly, and when I came to Adrian’s side, I finally stopped for real.

He was still the same. Now, when I was looking at him closely, he was shaking much more violently. His fingers were trying to open and close, even though it was hard to see. As if… as if he was trying to grasp something, to catch something.

I looked down into the dark pit with no bottom, which seemed to stretch into infinity.

It was silent, just like everything else. It was dark, like the first time I saw it.

My eyes moved upward, to the hole in the ceiling, that long hole through which the darkness of the sky could be seen. And somewhere in this hole, right where I was looking… there was a sunken area.

For a moment, I really felt as if time had frozen. I just stood there, doing nothing… maybe not even breathing. It was like… like a dream. She was just here… just a few minutes ago, we were walking side by side.

And now…

I felt my eyes watering, then I paused, sniffling slightly as I looked to my side, toward Adrian.

“Ad… rian?”

All his trembling suddenly stopped as he slowly turned toward me, his eyes widening even more. His emerald green eyes seemed to water for a moment, then… he just focused on the floor.

“I- I… I…”

He pulled back the arm he had held in the air until now, taking both palms in front of him, this time looking at them.

“She was in front of me… She was at my fingertips, I could catch her… I was going to catch her…”

His palms began to tremble again, a tear fell slowly onto his left hand.

“T- then… she fell… just like that, as if time had frozen and o- only she could move… she fell… she j- just fell… in… in front of my eyes…”

He said nothing else, his hair fell in front of him as he lowered his head, hiding his face.

I… I didn’t know what to do, how to react. I wasn’t even sure what to think, so I just stood there for seconds.

Is that how it is? Trying so hard to get out of here, to survive?

Did… Sue really died?

With my thoughts racing, with everything jumbled… I slowly leaned toward Adrian, taking his body in my arms as I crouched down, just like him.

I didn’t say anything, I didn’t do anything else. I just, simply, embraced him, the way my mother and father embraced me when I was a child. To comfort him and… myself even for a moment.

But it didn’t work. When I could feel how Adrian was trembling, this time with my own body… I started trembling too. I couldn’t stop the tears from coming to my eyes.

*(A/N: No chapter tomorrow, sorry. But I’ll upload another one the day after tomorrow.)*

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